Episode 6 – Chengdu and the Giant Pandas

We took the fast speed train from Xi’an to Chengdu and no surprise the train departed on the minute from Xi’an and arrived on the minute in Chengdu, fewer cars but every seat taken.

Chengdu is the capital of Sichuan province. 33 million people live in Sichuan province, 17 million of which call Chengdu home.

To the south of Sichuan province lies Yunnan Province whose capital Kunming is our next destination and to the west lies the Tibet Autonomous Region home of the Dalai Lama and Mt. Kailash, the most revered pilgrimage site on Earth.

Mt. Kailash is on my bucket list. Likely, I will circumambulate clockwise with the Buddhists and Hindus but I’m a bit of contrarian so don’t be surprised if when the time comes I may choose to go counterclockwise with the Jains and Bons but that’s for another day.

Today it’s Chengdu first stop the Panda Research Center. America’s and my own love affair with the Giant Panda began in 1972 when as a token of friendship to commemorate the normalization of relations between China and the US, China presented President Nixon with a pair of Giant Pandas following his visit to their Country.

Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing were immediate sensations and crowds waited hours in line at the Washington DC Zoo to catch a glimpse of them.

The Giant Panda Breeding Research Center was established in 1984 to study and understand the breeding habits of Giant Pandas in order to encourage them to breed in captivity hoping to save the endangered species from extinction. And it’s working. The facility started with 5 Giant Pandas caught in the wild and now houses more than 80. And most importantly it has produced more than 160 live births and many of those Pandas are on loan to zoos all over the world.

And of course it’s now one of Chengdu’s and China’s most visited tourist sites receiving more than 80,000 visitors on peak days.

Giant Pandas are too adorable for description so rather than even make the effort, I’m just gonna attach a few pictures and videos.

And we even got to see a tiny new born baby Giant Panda only days old in a tiny incubator.

And the center serves the same purpose for the Red Panda which is a species of its own but of nearly equally adorableness.

We then visited Kuanzaiseng which means wide and narrow allies, a beautiful restored ancient neighborhood of shops and food stalls where you can shop and sample everything from pig snouts to rabbit heads to chicken feet.

I remember that as a boy growing up in San Antonio, we had two Chinese restaurants one Cantonese which to me at the time meant sweet and sour and one Sichuan which meant hot. And so it is that the regional specialty of Sichuan province is Hot Pot. So we headed to Long Wan Ana Tou Chengdu’s premier Hot Pot restaurant for this regional specialty for lunch.

Unlike the Melting Pot chain in the US which fills the pot with oil, Hot Pot uses a pot of hot water and herbs fixed in the center of each table and they bring you plates of everything from sliced lamb, beef, spam, shrimp balls, fish, various mushrooms, vegetables, noodles and even Spam (yup Spam and it’s really good).

There’s a circular divider in the pot which separates the center area which is loaded with incredibly hot spices from the outer circle which starts out more mild. It was so delicious that we were there for 2 hours and consumed plate after plate and had a ton of fun.

And in the evening we attended a performance of Chengdu Opera. Honestly I was less than enthusiastic becsuse I’m not really an opera fan but turns out Chengdu Opera isn’t really Opera in the sense we know it.

It dates back more than 400 years to the Tang Dynasty and is more like a variety show with actors in elaborate colorful costumes, acrobats, puppeteers, magicians, fire breathing, musicians and the most amazing hand shadows I’ve ever seen.

There are at least four Chengdu Opera houses in the city but the best known and most highly rated is the one we attended called Shufengysnyum.

It takes place in a huge tea house pagoda with comfortable arm chairs and tea service and before the performance you can go to the actors dressing area next door and watch them dress and apply makeup.

The show was over an hour and s half and it was really riotous fun from start to finish!

All the acts were amazing but the shadow hand puppets may be my favorite. They were so intricate. Hard to believe I e performer can make these figures so life like with just her. 2 hands. These videos should give you an idea.

Tomorrow, we fly China Eastern from Chengdu to Kunming and I’m looking forward to experiencing China’s domestic air services.

So next up Episode 7 Kunming and the Stone Forrest!